David Sugden
After many false starts with 'organised' web logs like Blogger - I gave up and thought I'd have more interest and more input, if I did my own. This is just a simple web page, so any contributions will have to be via email [blog@village-e-learning.co.uk] - I promise to edit very little and to publish all lucid comments! Please state how I should sign you off (anon; my name; my name and address etc). I've deleted the comments feature, because of all the spam I was getting - sorry! e-Mail me if you have anything to say - address above. Click here to go to beginning of blog.

NEw post on ... Mobile Learning Blog updated 25th May

Dyslexia Technology

See Times Online Article

Txtng: The Gr8 Db8.  David Crystal Amazon

This book is reviewed in today's Sunday Times and it was a comment from the author that drew me into it. "Texting doesn't erode literacy: it actually challenges literacy skills". Brilliant! That's the sort of message, Di, Lils, James and I (amongst others) have been pushing for this last year. We touched on this before (see m-Learn pages), when the Sunday Times picked up on the question previously.

Crystal is honorary professor of linguistics at the University of Wales, Bangor and uses the book to answer charges by others that texting is ruining the language: "..doing to our language what Genghis Khan did to his neighbours 800 years ago" - John Humphrys (BBC). One such detractor suggests that texting masks dyslexia - which may be true, but on the other hands texting allows dyslexics to contribute and communicate without fear of ridicule or embarrassment. Some mobile phone tools actually help dyslexics tremendously - see Captura Talk software which is supplied and installed with the HTC TyTN on a micro SD card.

So, good on you David Crystal - I may even buy the book to see what else I can preach about during mobile learning sessions.

Sharon is still away in the States - due back next Sunday. Sadly, I had to cry off a 'puffin trip' led by Sal Cooke yesterday. This was a great disappointment, as I would have spent the day in the company of Nick Jeans and Lilian (with mini-me) and then gone on to John Whalley's summer barbecue. Karen and Dave were to join us, but Karen has laryngitis so had to give back word herself mid-week. On the strength of Karen being my taxi on the day, I'd booked my car in for a major service Friday/Saturday, so had to hurry the mechanic along (never an easy task) after Karen had fallen ill and all was well until my windscreen cracked after being jacked up! I was told that this would be impossible to get this fixed in time for me to go along on Saturday afternoon, so I sent my apologies. Hey ho - another day?

     
  View my delicious bookmarks here 

View the BBC Education RSS feed here  

Links

2008
January - March

2007
October - December
July - September
April - June
January-March

2006
2006 - all

Friends/Colleagues Darkhorse Radio

Featured Videos
Live Action Role Play
Nasty Chicken
Nasty Burgers
REAL Simpsons
Singh Simpsons
Boris Johnson tackle 

Resources
Filleting fish 
**Copyright free images
 Resource page
**Student Life.

My other 'stuff'
**Copyright FREE  photo's
My MySpace blog
Googlepages
Blogspot Blog

Holidays and Gigs
 WBL e-Guides
 Emma's Wedding
LSN gigs - first
USA 

It's funny isn't it how soon nature reacts to changed circumstances?

Because I've been at home most of the week, I've seen much more of the garden than I have for a while. It's been interesting therefore, to see a pair of doves making a nest in our willow tree. They are taking advantage of us having no cats around at the moment.

Since Simba died in May, there has only been Maisie to climb the tree (which is easily done) and keep guard on the property - which is what cats do!

As Maisie is currently staying with my mum and dad (they love it - and so does the cat), the doves must think it's safe to build a nest right in the middle of the most accessible tree in the garden.

The birds are in for a huge shock when she gets back!

Disappointed by all the rain here - I've been talking to Sharon via Skype. She's currently at Aruba Drive, ...

 
View Larger Map

... St Joseph's Bay, (zoom out to see where about this is) and enjoying the Florida sunshine. She's with her mum, Betony and sister Gail about two hours south of mum's home in Dothan, Alabama. Apparently the weather is HOT, HOT, HOT and I'm desperately jealous. I can't even sit in the conservatory to work as the rain is bouncing down so hard on the roof!

Why is it that companies who exist solely to provide a service people often think that they know what's best for me, and what I want? Thinly disguised as an ice-cap saving move on our behalf, hotels ask us to use our towels more than once and only to throw them in the bath if they NEED changing. What they really mean is 'please save us money'. T-Mobile have today sent me my "last paper bill" because they 'know' it will be more convenient for me to access my bill online in the future. I wish it was! I prefer paper bills from T-mobile because they (T-Mobile) are one of the increasing amount of online sites that tell me the format of my username and of my password (you must have a mixture of numeric and non-numeric digits). As a result I forget these and have to go through no end of security questioning to get to the site. I naughtily write the details down but shouldn't it be up to me to decide how to secure my login details and not the site holding these details? I also have to provide printed information for my accountant so in the end, I have to bear the cost of printing out the bill myself and STILL the planet suffers. But this time at my cost not T-Mobile's!

I'm in Birmingham at the moment, at a JISC Learning and Teaching Experts group meeting. Sadly, the membership now seems to have become predominantly H.E. and I could only recognise Ellen Lessner as an F.E. practitioner. Cam Swift from RSC-Northern is here, Eta De Cico and Alan Clark from NIACE and Ros Smith - that's it for what I regard as the wider post-16 community. There may be one or two others but I don't know them. It's great to hear of some of the work going on in H.E. but I'm not too comfortable with the lack of focus of sub-University stuff being discussed. Issues remain the same but solutions are often different. Discussion in the afternoon about e-Strategy (for H.E.) and e-Construction. http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/publications/sfcbookletectp.aspx. Tried to improve learner autonomy. Partners include: http://www.learndirectandbuild.com/, They have over 200 learning objects, all scorm compliant over many construction trades. (Joe Drake from York College was one of five or six experts who supplied expertise). Five different levels of quality/complexity (1 = text - 5 = fully immersive game). Materials all available online - will share - contact details soon. Learners drove development of staff?

Whilst at the RSC-NW conference last week I was fortunate to meet Terry Middleton again. terry had moved from Stafford to Cumbria last year and I'd not seen or heard from in in quite a while. He's well and settled to his new life in the northern lake district. Also at the conference, I came across (via the redoubtable John Dalziel) a fabulous blogging tool (could be an e-Portfolio tool!) - see http://www.porteous.com. Try it - send it an email ...

I finished my work in the northeast yesterday with a double session in Gateshead. The morning looked at 'Learning Platforms' and the afternoon at 'e-Portfolios'. I'd gone by car for all sorts of reasons and had stayed at the Premier Inn at the end of Kingsway - Gateshead. Which was a good decision in the end. They cook their own food and as a result (and remarkably) both the menu and the food were excellent. Well done Premier Inn - except for not having the normal two breakfast rate (I don't want the cooked offerings at that time or in that environment).

Now that (well, after I've got home today) things have calmed down, I can start to finish off some of the itsy bitsy stuff which need more thought than I've been able to give them for a while. Then next week, I'm down to re-creating materials for a college and I'm meeting Sally from the W.I. to discuss some final items.

There is finally some light at the end of the tunnel. I was back up north again last Monday to present consecutive presentations on IWB's; Voting Systems and Blogs/Wikis - half an hour each repeated in the afternoon. We'd set up a Promethean and a Mimio but most (nearly all) of the delegates refused to come up an interact with the board.

This was a pattern which was followed the day after in Middlesbrough, where the afternoon workshop was devoted to Interactive Whiteboards. After signing their names (unavoidable), there was very little interaction at all. One delegate even suggested that that (interactive interaction) is not what she wanted to use it for! And that's the rub with adults - they do not like getting up and coming to the front of the room - even when they are teachers themselves.

I took Sharon and Betony to the airport on Thursday from where they were flying to Atlanta and then onto Alabama to see Sharon's parents. They will be having better weather than we are here! When I went for my Saturday morning walk yesterday, it was pouring down - we were walking in the clouds, and it's not much better today.

On Friday it was the RSC-Northwest conference and I was presenting a workshop called 'A Yorkshireman abroad - a round up of FREE stuff for PC and on the web'. Whilst I only managed to show ten items in the half hour slots, there was much discussion of use and I was able to point them at www.techdis.ac.uk/getfreeresources (initially via Emma on the TechDis stand).

This has been a really tiring week. I got to Leeds slightly later than I'd planned on Monday. The taxi queue was longer than expected so I walked to Thomas Danby College: with movie camera; tripod; computer and 'stuff'. Then back into Leeds for lunch at Bagel Nash, before moving onto Leeds College of Building. After a weekend of working on preparation and report writing, Monday was hard.

I was up early on Tuesday to catch the train to Middlesbrough, where I was working with RSC Northern at the Chamber of Commerce - which turned out to be just across the road from the station, which made the kit-carrying a bit easier. Here, I was delivering sessions about Learning Platforms and e-Portfolios. It wasn't the best room in the world (lighting was difficult), but all the delegates seemed to enjoy the various sessions. Brian, the RSC-N WBL officer kindly took me up to Newcastle then, where I stayed (foolishly) at the Newcastle Airport South Premiere Inn. I say 'foolishly' because I'd not considered the early morning noise.

Which meant another early morning. Today's events were more classroom based, with 'creative use of Office materials' and 'Free tools for web and pc use). They were not as well attended, but everyone seemed to enjoy the day. Brian then took me back into Toon for my train. Thanks Brian.

It was the NIACE e-Guides review event in Birmingham yesterday and was a great opportunity to meet like minded friends and colleagues. I'm developing a course for next year and this was peer assessed - which left me with a little more work for this weekend (which I expected).

I'm finally beginning to see a little light at the end of the tunnel. I've had to work that last two weekends just to keep up with gig preparation. Even if I've delivered a subject before, I like to go through it again, updating and correcting as I do so. But this last few weeks (and the next two) have seen me delivering slightly different subject matters. Last weekend I had to prepare for the RSC Southwest conference (Thursday last) and this weekend I've been preparing for two days working for RSC Northern - Learning Platforms and e-Portfolios, both being newly prepared from scratch so as to keep them relevant and interactive. The other two subjects will be completed tomorrow evening, whilst whiling my time away in a hotel somewhere near Newcastle airport.

The Southwest gig was good. I was nervous of it because I'd been booked on the strength of last years presentation, which was only about half an hour long. This year's booking was for 90 minutes and I'd been asked for 'hand's on'. With hindsight, I'd have done it differently but I got the feeling that more than half of those present enjoyed what they got. At the conference, I met many old friends - like last year - not the least of whom was Rod Paley of Xtensis - holders of the NLN materials. Rod is due to meet important people from the LSC this week and our discussions led to plenty of ideas for that meeting. But we were unable to meet with enough time to write down the ideas we discussed. Basically, we'd talked about the fact that there was still much 'unawareness' of NLN materials and e-Learning tools, tips and techniques generally amongst practitioners. Despite the Xtensis records that show how many people have accessed the materials, my own experiences (which are varied - not just single-sector) are that there is still a lack of general understanding of what NLN or 'e' can do. Having said that, there is a readiness amongst teaching colleagues, to take it ('e' generally and NLN specifically if they can be shown how the two might combine) on board - unlike six years ago when NLN was launched - but they NEED training and support.STILL!